


Your Heart is Too Strong Anyway

by alchemystique



Series: Discovery [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Captain Duckling, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 21:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2403056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma somehow manages to get herself kidnapped again, and despite being told specifically to stay home, the pirate doesn't actually listen all that well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Heart is Too Strong Anyway

**  
Your Heart Is Too Strong, Anyway**

It was inevitable, really, that Regina would try again. Emma can't have been easy to find on an enchanted ship sailing through the realms, but here, back in her own kingdom, with rumors swirling around her return, it was bound to happen.

What they're all trying very hard to understand is _how she succeeded._

David and Lancelot's knights have ridden the last two days at breakneck pace into the Dark Forest, the land of Regina's banishment (Poor planning on their part, really, they should have sent her to Gumdrop Forest or Unicorn Valley) in order to reach Emma in time, but it's on the second night that they realize they are being followed.

They've taken a moment to let the horses rest, bundled close around the edges of a small fire, and David whips his head around as he hears another noise in the trees behind him, but as ever there seems to be no one around. 

He's going insane. He must be going insane. It's no small wonder, really - two years of thinking his daughter lost to them forever, lost to the clutches of a sorceress they couldn't touch, only to have her returned as an honorary pirate with a crew of miscreants she had demanded pardons for, and Captain Hook himself staring at the woman like she hung the stars in the sky (not that she didn't - David at least, can understand where that thought might have come from) - no, he isn't exactly surprised he's lost what little of his mind he'd had before.

He swears he hears another rustle in the bushes, and forces himself not to look toward the noise.

But a moment later Lancelot unsheathes his sword, turning towards the tree line with focused eyes.

"Wait!" comes a familiar voice from the trees, and Sneezy stumbles out of the bushes, followed by Grumpy, Happy, and... Smee.

David has never been more annoyed in his life at the ability the women he loves have to make men fall on their knees to fight for her.

He watches with a roll of his eyes as Starkey, Turk, and Black Murphy all file out behind Doc and Sleepy, and waits for a moment for Jones to step out of the trees as well. He does so looking even more ornery than usual, his scowl firmly in place as he stares David down.

He'd been very specific when he'd told these men that they were _not_ going to be joining the rescue party - he has no idea what their fighting abilities are, no idea where their loyalties ultimately lie (Emma, always Emma, really), and they would slow the party down. 

"We were forced to double back to find you, _Dave_ ," Jones says, putting as much derision into the name as he possibly can. "If you're quite done with your little campfire, I have a princess to rescue. Again."

"You will address His Majesty with more respect, sir, or -."

David raises his hand to fend off his own knights as Jones' hook gleams against the firelight. The man looks prepared to skewer anyone who gets in his way. 

"Lets just go," he says quietly, and his ridiculous band of would-be heroes all band together to chase down their princess.

\------

Jones is quiet as they edge up on the castle - despite the sheer amount of protection spells in place, it had actually been a blessing to have the dwarves around (and, he will admit begrudgingly, the pyrotechnically capable Mr. Starkey); they'd found the remnants of an old tunnel the pirate had been giddy about blowing open, and as they all slide into the tunnel quietly, David realizes with no small amount of gratitude that it leads straight into the bowels of the palace.

David has spent most of the night watching Captain Jones curiously - the man, usual so quick with a smart comment or a clever innuendo, has been nearly silent since showing himself, alternating between glaring at the trees and glaring at the backs of the knights heads. He seems to have developed a nervous tic, the fingers of his hand tapping out impatient rhythms against the pommel of the saddle as he glowers at thin air as if personally offended by it. 

He's beginning to get a full grasp of the man. He is, under the sarcasm and the eyebrow theatrics, in essence a man of honor - the type of man who makes a promise and keeps it at whatever cost, the type of man who fights his own battles and cares for people with fierce devotion.

The kind of man David knows is right for Emma. 

He falls back from his own nights to keep pace with the pirate as they all trot down the length of the old tunnels, and Jones shoots a look in his direction that would terrify a lesser man.

"If you're here to lecture me on proper procedure or policies of the realm, you can bloody well stuff it, your majesty. I'm a pirate, not a peon."

"I had no plans to lecture you. I merely meant to thank you for your help."

He grimaces at that, as though he finds the idea of gratitude distasteful. "If I'd been there we wouldn't be in need of a rescue party," he grumbles, and David's eyes widen at the realization. He _blames_ himself for the Black Knights appearance and kidnapping of Emma. 

"You'd probably just be dead, and I'd have a missing and _distraught_ daughter. So. I'm counting this as a win."

The pirate sighs to himself, eyes darting up toward the party of knights ahead of them, two of his finest now missing from the procession, cut down by Regina's men.

"You must be getting used to all this rescuing," David finally says, and the pirate rolls his eyes at the jab - he'd jumped in front of a speeding carriage only five days ago to rescue a little girls dog from being crushed under it, and the whole castle has been abuzz with the story ever since. 

His voice is deep and serious as he shoots David an indiscernible look. "You know I'd go to the end of the world for her."

"And she you," David says, and though he'd hardly meant it as a question, Jones shrugs, the force of it bunching up the shoulders of his jacket for a moment. Feeling a bit silly, David claps the man on the back. "That wasn't a question, Captain."

Humming softly to himself, they both turn as one to follow the rest of the group through the tunnels.

\------

He can hear swords clashing behind him, and knows it's only a matter of time before Regina makes an appearance - he nods Jones forward as the knights face off behind them, and they tumble down the corridor, hoping against hope they're headed in the right direction.

They are. They both swing around a corner, throwing themselves sideways, only to come nearly nose to nose with Emma, dusting herself off and staring at them both like they are complete idiots. 

"Emma!"

"Hook," she says, a grin curling the corners of her lips.

"What the hell are you doing? You're depriving me of my dashing rescue."

Her grin widens as she darts a glance between Jones and David. "Sorry. The only one who saves me is me."

With no time to wonder how the hell Emma had managed to escape, David watches Jones toss a cutlass towards Emma, and she catches it easily, already trying to push past them towards the swordfight still going on in the corridor. 

Jones wraps fingers carefully around her arm, yanking her backward. "I think it would be prudent, darling, to take an alternate route."

"Great. You take your alternate route. I have some more rescuing to do."

He groans, low in his throat, his facing giving way to the fact that he's used to this kind of behavior. "You didn't, love."

"Oh, I did."

"You're going to get us both bloody killed with your savior antics, sweetheart."

"That's what your here for, right? I do the savior-ing, you watch my back."

"Dead. The both of us. And your father too, come to think of it."

Emma's eye roll is exaggerated enough to make her mother proud. "Follow me," she says, taking off down another hallway, and like the idiots they both are, they do.

\------

The ride back is an interesting one - fighting Regina's knights seems to have bonded this rather odd rescue party, and between the boisterous laughter being shared between Lancelot and Black Murphy, and the overly talkative boy sitting in the stirrups in front of Emma, gesturing wildly as he reenacts the fighting he'd seen for possibly the twentieth time today, David shares a look with Jones that is ten parts frustration and twenty parts celebration. 

Jones has hardly taken his eyes off the pair on the horse next to him, and David can't tell which part he finds more amusing - the intense focus of his gaze when he stares at Emma, or the soft, heartfelt smile as he stares at the boy they've just finished rescuing, an orphan who'd stolen an apple from the queen and spent the next two years locked up in a cell in the dungeons. 

There is something familial in that gaze, something that makes David wonder if he shouldn't start hinting at engagements in order to save his daughter from giving birth out of wedlock. 

He really can't quite grasp how this became his life. 

\------

The boy, Henry, takes a place in the kitchens with Starkey, and a room across the hall from Emma's, and some nights as he wanders the empty castle halls he'll push through the doors to Henry's rooms to find a most alarmingly adorable sight - Captain Hook curled up against the headboard of Henry's overlarge bed, eyes closed and head tilting sideways, with Henry tucked up against his shoulder, eyes drooping toward closed as Emma reads from the old storybook she'd grown up listening to. 

He lets the door swing back closed as he shakes his head, and he has to bite back hard on the smile that edges over his face as he tells Snow the story later that night.

**Author's Note:**

> Any familiar dialogue is taken directly from "There's No Place Like Home"


End file.
